Anyone who knows me, knows that if I am not talking about twitter, I am probably talking about altmetrics (see my previous blog posts). Quite a few people (faculty, clinicians, librarians) have asked me about article level metrics (ALMs) of late, so I have put together a brief overview on slideshare as it is a lot easier to explain the concept of altmetrics using visuals rather than text. It is really only the tip of the iceberg as regards ALMs, but the resources linked to within the presentation will provide a lot of further reading if desired. Feedback and comments welcome (by email, twitter or via the comments below).
15 Apr 2013
13 Apr 2013
The power of sharing
This week has been an inspiring one for those involved in the Library and Information sector within Ireland, as two conferences were held in Dublin illustrating the vibrancy of the profession. The Joint LAI CILIP Conference took place in Croke Park over two days on the 10th and 11th of April with an evening reception on the 10th in Dublin's splendid City Hall. The second conference was that of the Health Sciences Library Group which took place on the 11th and 12th of April. Unfortunately for me, I was unable to attend both conferences, however, I was able to follow both via Twitter. Excellent 'live tweeting' was undertaken by our colleagues who were actually in attendance and therefore I ended up not missing out on the content of these inspiring conferences.
This is the power of sharing - the power of information and the power of our profession. The information on what was taking place at both conferences was relaid in real time - inspirational and engaging presentations, workshops and networking were disseminated via Twitter. You could follow the action via the use of the #laicilip13 #laicilip2013 #hslg13 #hslg2013 hash tags or you can catch up at a later time. Nothing illustrates the vibrancy of our profession and of our own engagement more vividly in my opinion than 'live tweeting'. You don't have to be a cool kid on the block, or straight out of library school to get involved with Twitter and other available social media tools. Technology is the information professionals friend - it is a tool to aid us in our service delivery - whether in a large organisation with dedicated systems librarians or the solo librarians and volunteers that are working within tight budgets and even tighter time frames.
If you are not signed up to Twitter and you are working in a library or as an information professional than you should join today. No technical wizardry is required - but an open mind, an Internet connection or access to wi-fi and away you go. Get involved by following discussions, organisations and people who interest you. There are plenty of library related chats taking place - the organised #irelibchat and #uklibchat - and the informal discussions amongst colleagues and friends.You can use it as a networking tool - it's great for those of us who are shy in person - and it's a fun way to learn up to date information on what is happening out there in the field. You can connect with colleagues in Ireland and further afield. There is a vibrant online community of information professionals, archivists, museum professionals and institutions available to you. One thing is for sure the library and information profession is going from strength to strength here in Ireland - if you are on Twitter you can be more involved and aware of the developments taking place.
This is the power of sharing - the power of information and the power of our profession. The information on what was taking place at both conferences was relaid in real time - inspirational and engaging presentations, workshops and networking were disseminated via Twitter. You could follow the action via the use of the #laicilip13 #laicilip2013 #hslg13 #hslg2013 hash tags or you can catch up at a later time. Nothing illustrates the vibrancy of our profession and of our own engagement more vividly in my opinion than 'live tweeting'. You don't have to be a cool kid on the block, or straight out of library school to get involved with Twitter and other available social media tools. Technology is the information professionals friend - it is a tool to aid us in our service delivery - whether in a large organisation with dedicated systems librarians or the solo librarians and volunteers that are working within tight budgets and even tighter time frames.If you are not signed up to Twitter and you are working in a library or as an information professional than you should join today. No technical wizardry is required - but an open mind, an Internet connection or access to wi-fi and away you go. Get involved by following discussions, organisations and people who interest you. There are plenty of library related chats taking place - the organised #irelibchat and #uklibchat - and the informal discussions amongst colleagues and friends.You can use it as a networking tool - it's great for those of us who are shy in person - and it's a fun way to learn up to date information on what is happening out there in the field. You can connect with colleagues in Ireland and further afield. There is a vibrant online community of information professionals, archivists, museum professionals and institutions available to you. One thing is for sure the library and information profession is going from strength to strength here in Ireland - if you are on Twitter you can be more involved and aware of the developments taking place.
12 Apr 2013
Visible Evidence: HSLG Annual Conference, 11-12th April 2013
I was fortunate enough to make this year's HSLG conference as both an attendee and a presenter, and the theme of the conference - Visible Evidence - was both timely and inspirational. Following last year's focus on the findings of the SHELLI report, this year the emphasis shifted towards implementation and the logistics of putting the recommendations into practice.
The keynote from Jean Shipman set the tone for the first day, by showcasing some of the innovative projects and roles that the library in the University of Utah has adopted in recent years. Increasingly, books and journals are being removed in order to free up physical space for collaboration, reflecting the Library's emerging role centred on organising people rather than collecting resources. Anne Murphy and Aoife Lawton from the HSLG's SHELLI Working Group (I'll disclose my membership conflict of interest here :)) brought us up to speed regarding the recommendations and actions for establishing a body of evidence, developing staff and services, and identifying champions.
The variety of presentations over the two days articulated the breadth of roles within health science librarianship, from upskilling in an academic library context (Donna Ó Doibhlin, UL), strategic planning as a solo librarian (Laura Rooney Ferris, IHF) and the practicalities of designing promotional brochures (Niamh O'Sullivan, IBTS). It drove home the point that as an LIS professional working in HS, you can potentially take the role in several different directions, drawing out the aspects you see as key services for your users now and in the future. At the same time, we have a real responsibility to ensure our services are both informed and driven by high quality and meaningful evidence.
Publishing and disseminating our own research can also play a part in increasing our visibility both inside and outside our institution, and Friday morning's session provided an opportunity to hear from three librarians as authors (including myself). No doubt others will be inspired to think about how we can communicate our evidence-base to others from Joanne Callanan's bibliotherapy study and Greg Sheaf's report on integrating and evaluating information literacy instruction for midwifery students. Greg's presentation was a personal highlight, as I am always looking for interesting ways to measure the impact of our services, and analysing search histories from Firefox is an excellent idea I may be borrowing in the future!
It was particularly refreshing to get the input of non-LIS professionals also, including Dr Declan McKeown, Consultant in Public Health Medicine and Dr Ian Callanan, Clinical Audit Co‐Ordinator in SVHG. Both presentations served as a reminder to us that we do not work alone and can only continue to deliver and improve our services by collaborating and working with others. Over the two days, the real take home point for me was that each and every one of us has a role to play in both influencing and determining the future of health science libraries in Ireland. Staying the same is simply not an option, and it is up to all of us to reshape our services to drive this change. The snapshots from the presenters showed some great projects and initiatives that are already underway. However, the challenge remains to build on this platform and sustain these efforts in the face of an uncertain future for health libraries.
The keynote from Jean Shipman set the tone for the first day, by showcasing some of the innovative projects and roles that the library in the University of Utah has adopted in recent years. Increasingly, books and journals are being removed in order to free up physical space for collaboration, reflecting the Library's emerging role centred on organising people rather than collecting resources. Anne Murphy and Aoife Lawton from the HSLG's SHELLI Working Group (I'll disclose my membership conflict of interest here :)) brought us up to speed regarding the recommendations and actions for establishing a body of evidence, developing staff and services, and identifying champions.
The variety of presentations over the two days articulated the breadth of roles within health science librarianship, from upskilling in an academic library context (Donna Ó Doibhlin, UL), strategic planning as a solo librarian (Laura Rooney Ferris, IHF) and the practicalities of designing promotional brochures (Niamh O'Sullivan, IBTS). It drove home the point that as an LIS professional working in HS, you can potentially take the role in several different directions, drawing out the aspects you see as key services for your users now and in the future. At the same time, we have a real responsibility to ensure our services are both informed and driven by high quality and meaningful evidence.
Publishing and disseminating our own research can also play a part in increasing our visibility both inside and outside our institution, and Friday morning's session provided an opportunity to hear from three librarians as authors (including myself). No doubt others will be inspired to think about how we can communicate our evidence-base to others from Joanne Callanan's bibliotherapy study and Greg Sheaf's report on integrating and evaluating information literacy instruction for midwifery students. Greg's presentation was a personal highlight, as I am always looking for interesting ways to measure the impact of our services, and analysing search histories from Firefox is an excellent idea I may be borrowing in the future!
It was particularly refreshing to get the input of non-LIS professionals also, including Dr Declan McKeown, Consultant in Public Health Medicine and Dr Ian Callanan, Clinical Audit Co‐Ordinator in SVHG. Both presentations served as a reminder to us that we do not work alone and can only continue to deliver and improve our services by collaborating and working with others. Over the two days, the real take home point for me was that each and every one of us has a role to play in both influencing and determining the future of health science libraries in Ireland. Staying the same is simply not an option, and it is up to all of us to reshape our services to drive this change. The snapshots from the presenters showed some great projects and initiatives that are already underway. However, the challenge remains to build on this platform and sustain these efforts in the face of an uncertain future for health libraries.
11 Apr 2013
Flying together and sharing our teaching resources: the CoPILOT initiative
Guest Post by Nancy Graham
What is CoPILOT?
CoPILOT is the Community of Practice for Information Literacy Online Teaching. We are an enthusiastic group of librarians and learning technologists who support other librarians, learning developers and technologists in creating and sharing openly licensed (using Creative Commons licences) resources to teach information and digital literacy.
There are ten of us on the Committee (which is now a sub-group of the CILIP Information Literacy Group) and together we organise training events, maintain a website and disseminate information. We also have a mailing list with over 270 members worldwide.
What inspired CoPILOT?
I’ve been a subject librarian in HE for 8 years. When I first started developing teaching resources for my students I wanted to see examples of best practice to help inform my own teaching. As librarians we have a strong professional identity and many well established networks within the librarian community. I see this as a perfect opportunity to share ideas, not only to avoid re-inventing the wheel but also to identify best practice and improve our own teaching. I ran several projects with exciting acronyms (BRUM, ReJIG, ReLO…), all focused on creating and adapting teaching resources so that they could be easily shared with other librarians.
In 2010/2011 I worked with Jane Secker from LSE on the JISC/HEA funded DELILA project and after the project was completed we wanted to continue the work and encourage librarians to create and, more importantly, share their teaching materials openly.
We ran a worldwide survey in April 2012 that had over 100 responses. We used this as the basis to set up the CoPILOT Committee and start work on what respondents to the survey were demanding, namely training in how to use Creative Commons with their own material and how to find existing openly licenced teaching resources. The results of the survey are available in the report Librarians, Information Literacy and Open Educational Resources: Report of a Survey.
As the Committee was being set up, Jane and I ran another JISC/HEA funded project, also called CoPILOT: Community of Practice for Information Literacy Online Teaching: a case study of an international online community. University of Birmingham. This was a 2 month project in which we explored the use of an online platform to share information literacy resources.
What’s happening now?
We have arranged a one day event at the University of Surrey in May (watch out for publicity for this!) which will be a practical event to help librarians adapt their own teaching material and to help them find other existing resources.
If the event is successful we will run iterations of it in Northern England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland over the coming year. If you are interested in helping to arrange/run an event in Ireland please get in touch! All materials from the event will be available online using Creative Commons licenses, naturally!
What about the future?
We are developing an online community of practice and Jane and I have been at several conferences recently to spread the word and gather ideas on how it should work. We will share links to resources, provide guidance and generate discussion and communication. We will regularly highlight specific ranges of teaching materials and encourage members of the community to put up requests for material they would like to see. Join us!
Mailing list: IL-OERS[at]jiscmail.ac.uk (to subscribe go to this page: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=IL-OERS)
Wiki: http://iloer.pbworks.com
Twitter: @CoPILOT2013
Or contact me directly at n.graham.1[at]bham.ac.uk
*Guest blog posts represent the personal views of the poster and do not represent the official opinions or commentary of libfocus.com
What is CoPILOT?
CoPILOT is the Community of Practice for Information Literacy Online Teaching. We are an enthusiastic group of librarians and learning technologists who support other librarians, learning developers and technologists in creating and sharing openly licensed (using Creative Commons licences) resources to teach information and digital literacy.
There are ten of us on the Committee (which is now a sub-group of the CILIP Information Literacy Group) and together we organise training events, maintain a website and disseminate information. We also have a mailing list with over 270 members worldwide.
What inspired CoPILOT?
I’ve been a subject librarian in HE for 8 years. When I first started developing teaching resources for my students I wanted to see examples of best practice to help inform my own teaching. As librarians we have a strong professional identity and many well established networks within the librarian community. I see this as a perfect opportunity to share ideas, not only to avoid re-inventing the wheel but also to identify best practice and improve our own teaching. I ran several projects with exciting acronyms (BRUM, ReJIG, ReLO…), all focused on creating and adapting teaching resources so that they could be easily shared with other librarians.
In 2010/2011 I worked with Jane Secker from LSE on the JISC/HEA funded DELILA project and after the project was completed we wanted to continue the work and encourage librarians to create and, more importantly, share their teaching materials openly.
We ran a worldwide survey in April 2012 that had over 100 responses. We used this as the basis to set up the CoPILOT Committee and start work on what respondents to the survey were demanding, namely training in how to use Creative Commons with their own material and how to find existing openly licenced teaching resources. The results of the survey are available in the report Librarians, Information Literacy and Open Educational Resources: Report of a Survey.
As the Committee was being set up, Jane and I ran another JISC/HEA funded project, also called CoPILOT: Community of Practice for Information Literacy Online Teaching: a case study of an international online community. University of Birmingham. This was a 2 month project in which we explored the use of an online platform to share information literacy resources.
What’s happening now?
We have arranged a one day event at the University of Surrey in May (watch out for publicity for this!) which will be a practical event to help librarians adapt their own teaching material and to help them find other existing resources.
If the event is successful we will run iterations of it in Northern England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland over the coming year. If you are interested in helping to arrange/run an event in Ireland please get in touch! All materials from the event will be available online using Creative Commons licenses, naturally!
What about the future?
We are developing an online community of practice and Jane and I have been at several conferences recently to spread the word and gather ideas on how it should work. We will share links to resources, provide guidance and generate discussion and communication. We will regularly highlight specific ranges of teaching materials and encourage members of the community to put up requests for material they would like to see. Join us!
Mailing list: IL-OERS[at]jiscmail.ac.uk (to subscribe go to this page: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=IL-OERS)
Wiki: http://iloer.pbworks.com
Twitter: @CoPILOT2013
Or contact me directly at n.graham.1[at]bham.ac.uk
*Guest blog posts represent the personal views of the poster and do not represent the official opinions or commentary of libfocus.com
9 Apr 2013
#irelibchat 23rd April 8pm: The 21st Century Librarian: Skills, competencies and attributes
"Modern librarians need to be comfortable and conversant with technology, be willing and able to speak in public, and possess people skills and a commitment to lifelong learning, as the profession and the expertise necessary for success are constantly changing"
Do you have strong communication, I.T., technical, marketing and organisational skills?
Are you flexible, innovative, passionate and committed?
Can you think on your feet, troubleshoot, collaborate, negotiate and network effectively, and plan strategically as well as operationally?
Management skills are sometimes neglected when we talk about librarianship but staff management, financial management, leadership and project management skills are essential in many roles today, particularly as your career develops.
Join in the next #irelibchat on Twitter on Tuesday April 23rd at 8pm (two weeks from today!) and share your ideas and experiences.
Do you have strong communication, I.T., technical, marketing and organisational skills?
Are you flexible, innovative, passionate and committed?
Can you think on your feet, troubleshoot, collaborate, negotiate and network effectively, and plan strategically as well as operationally?
Management skills are sometimes neglected when we talk about librarianship but staff management, financial management, leadership and project management skills are essential in many roles today, particularly as your career develops.
- What skills and attributes - if any - do you think are essential in LIS today?
- Which are over-emphasised? Which are under-rated?
- Does it depend on the type of library / role you are working in?
- What exactly is it, that makes a good LIS professional, good?
- Does the concept of The Librarian even exist?
Join in the next #irelibchat on Twitter on Tuesday April 23rd at 8pm (two weeks from today!) and share your ideas and experiences.
5 Apr 2013
Knowing your student: the path toward engagement analytics
The recently published Horizon report noted that the current trending of learning
analytics will become standard fare in education institutions over the next few years. Surely, a plethora of variables affect a student's ability in experiencing a rounded and successful education, and it goes without saying that managing those is by no means a straightforward exercise from a provider point-of-view.
The idea, therefore, to carefully and consistently monitor students' engagement with the many different contact points in an education institution is a good starting point. Some illustrative examples of analytic variables include attendance (all types), use of the library (analogue and digital), VLE engagement, personal background (e.g. home or abroad student, age profile, level of language proficiency, commuting distance, etc.), timetable (shape of student's day), complaints (academic and otherwise), social profile (e.g participation in organised extracurricular activities) among many others.
Before bringing up a specific institutional case study which applied analytics as a means to identifying at-risk students, it makes sense to clarify the term learning analytics as "the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimising learning and the environment in which it occurs" (LAK).
Yet, it is important to acknowledge that learning analytics by itself is only one (important) ingredient within a holistic socio-technical analysis mix that aims to create a richer understanding about a student's educational journey. "Hard" data by itself is not sufficient. Instead, the desired informational end-state of educators is to create meaningful insight into at-risk students for the purpose of enacting proactive (rather than reactive) intervention at the right point in time. The grid below illustrates this idea of generating information and insights through analytics (source: Davenport et al, 2010)
Derby's SETL (Student Experience Traffic Lighting) project looked at students' experiences when interacting with the institution. The focus here was on "engagement" analytics through focus groups and interviews with students and staff whereby hard data and analytics initially featured in the background. The project was interested in finding out what genuinely mattered to students from a lived experience perspective and what data analytics staff believe should feature in a student's profile.
The initial project questions revolved around 1) what is actually happening to students, how can we find out?, 2) what are the touch points with between students and the institution?, 3) what are the institutional "digital footprints" of our students?, 4) what really matters to students?
Effectively, SETL established the requirements for a data dashboard that utilises a traffic-light system (green,amber,red) monitoring individual students' progression and alerting staff about any anomalies that might negatively impact their study journey. Meaningful/informed conversations can then be held between tutors and students based on what Derby calls "engagement analytics".
Yet, it is important to acknowledge that learning analytics by itself is only one (important) ingredient within a holistic socio-technical analysis mix that aims to create a richer understanding about a student's educational journey. "Hard" data by itself is not sufficient. Instead, the desired informational end-state of educators is to create meaningful insight into at-risk students for the purpose of enacting proactive (rather than reactive) intervention at the right point in time. The grid below illustrates this idea of generating information and insights through analytics (source: Davenport et al, 2010)
Past
|
Present
|
Future
|
|
Information
|
What happened?
|
What’s happening now?
|
What will happen?
|
Insight
|
How and why did it happen?
|
What’s the next best action?
|
What’s the best/worst that can happen?
|
Derby's SETL (Student Experience Traffic Lighting) project looked at students' experiences when interacting with the institution. The focus here was on "engagement" analytics through focus groups and interviews with students and staff whereby hard data and analytics initially featured in the background. The project was interested in finding out what genuinely mattered to students from a lived experience perspective and what data analytics staff believe should feature in a student's profile.
The initial project questions revolved around 1) what is actually happening to students, how can we find out?, 2) what are the touch points with between students and the institution?, 3) what are the institutional "digital footprints" of our students?, 4) what really matters to students?
Effectively, SETL established the requirements for a data dashboard that utilises a traffic-light system (green,amber,red) monitoring individual students' progression and alerting staff about any anomalies that might negatively impact their study journey. Meaningful/informed conversations can then be held between tutors and students based on what Derby calls "engagement analytics".
From a library/information service perspective, the collection of analytics is nothing new. Examples include borrowing of books (down to student level), footfall via access control gates (down to student level), IM reference traffic, participation in organised IL instruction classes (down to student level), e-journal use (Athens) etc.
The challenge is to break down and pool analytic data from different collection systems (library, registrar, VLE, student services...) into one container which can then be accessed by staff and utilised on a per-student level. Ethical and legal aspects in collecting personalised analytic data must also be considered.
It is a rounded and student focused approach towards analytics that creates the conditions for an environment of constructive teaching and learning.
Jean Mutton (University of Derby) offers the following advice regarding analytics related projects:
- Keep the end user firmly in mind,
- Promote a sense of excitement and fun,
- Talk to people "the best conversation can happen in corridors",
- Work at a cross-institutional level as much as possible,
- Have access points, e.g. in-house web pages/forums where people can get involved,
- Shock people with data
- Get people to think outside their immediate area of focus,
- Keep an open mind as to what information your university/school does/could/can't capture and how it could be used,
- Try to ensure that any data being collected can be used by as many people and systems as possible
References and further reading:
JISC. 2013. cetis Publications. [ONLINE] Available at: http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/c/analytics. [Accessed 01 April 13].
Essa, A., Ayad, H.. Improving student success using predictive models and data visualisations. Research in Learning Technology, North America, 20, aug. 2012. Available at: http://www.researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/19191. [Accessed: 01 April 2013].
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